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Chrétien on Trudeau and vice-versa

Former prime minister Jean Chrétien said over the weekend that Justin Trudeau is all about winning. Funny, I thought when I heard that snippet in his interview with Tom Clark -- that's exactly what Trudeau says about Chrétien.

Tom Clark
: I want to talk about that in a second but I do want to get your views on one other contemporary issue that deals with the Liberal party. The presumptive winner of the leadership of course is going to be Justin Trudeau, but when you take a look at Justin, the criticism that you hear about him is this: that he has no real policies, he’s got no particular vision, that he doesn’t exude a sense of what the country is.

Jean Chrétien
: He has a very big policy. He wants to replace the Tories. That is fundamental for Canada.

Tom Clark
: Is that enough?

Article Continued Below

Jean Chrétien
: Yes.

As some of you may know, I've been working on
Star Dispatches
ebook about the Trudeau leadership campaign, which is due out early in April. As part of that project, during an interview, I asked Trudeau to compare himself to some other Liberal leaders (beyond his father.) Here's what he had to say about Chrétien:

Trudeau
:
"We have a similar love for people and for simplicity. .... I love being underestimated as a politician. ... He was extremely, and continues to be an extremely, smart, edgy, thinking-around-corners kind
of guy.

"But where I tend to differ from him a little bit is in the game focus of
politics. For him it's about, winning, for me it's about serving. It's about building, it's about doing right. It's not about the
score. It's not to prove anything. ...We all know his background. He had a tremendous amount to
prove and he's justifiably, extremely proud of what he's managed to build through his life, but the focus was on proving
that to others, and for me that's not what this is about."

So there you go. Given that the two of them have some experience with
boxing
/
wrestling
, we can let them sort it out.

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